Ode to two Worlds

The dialectic of the two artistic worlds in the exhibition, the photographic world of Sissa Micheli and the pictorial world of Thomas Riess, becomes a sung ode. What links these two positions, so divergent in terms of media and artistic process? The figures that characterise both Micheli's photography and Riess's painting are stripped of their individuality. They are present yet hidden, and this hiding leads us to wonder what is behind them, behind the cascades of fabric in the photograph, behind the dynamics of the brush that hide the faces, which have detached themselves from their descriptive function to become pure painting. The loss of identity that we are aware of in both artistic processes can be seen as an expression of the current digital levelling of individuality, social uniformity, such as in social media, and the pressure they exert on individuals.